NLP & fitness

SPRING
March 04, 2015

Neuro-Linguistic Programing: The field of NLP was cocreated by Richard Bandler and linguist John Grinder in the 1970s. They asked themselves a simple yet fascinating question: What makes the difference between someone who excels at a skill and someone with basic competence?

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

What is NLP?

The name ‘Neuro-linguistic programming’ comes from the three areas that bring it together: Neuro, interprets the mind and how we think. Linguistics, how we use language and how it affects us. And last, programming defines how we sequence our actions to achieve our goals. NLP is about you and your personal experience with the world around you, how we perceive it and how we react to these experiences.

NLP studies how we structure our subjective experience, how we think about our values and believes,
and how we create our emotional states, as well as how we construct our internal world from our experience and give it meaning. As a fitness professional I believe that NLP maybe an essential tool to connect with our clients by creating rapport and enhancing a quality of relationship, this will promote confidence to excel and participate in more demanding workouts as well as a improve communication.

“NLP helps people understand, at a practical level, how they and others make sense of the world. It enables people to detect their own learned patterns of thought and behavior, and it has the tools to reprogram negative patterns with more positive ones.”
- Pam Rigden, Personal trainer and NLP practitioner.

NLP can be used to motivate and help people achieve behavioral changes. Adapting this set of skills might help create good long lasting dietary habits that will help people move forward with their goals, without dreading the process instilled in their minds about a painful tasteless road. A couple of the biggest tools that NLP provides are the anchors, the techniques of mirroring and matching and the multiple techniques on behavior change.

Interesting Psych Facts

The idea of anchoring came from behavioral psychologist Ivan Pavlov. During the 1890’s Pavlov was looking at salivation in dogs in response to being fed, when he noticed that his dogs would begin to
salivate whenever he entered the room, even when he was not bringing them food. Pavlov discovered that any object or event which the dogs learnt to associate with food (such as the lab assistant) would trigger the same response. He decided to go a step forward and manipulate the stimulus; by handling a bell he would elicit the same reaction of salivation.

Time to anchor Down!!

Lets say you have a big presentation coming up, and you find yourself petrified by the anxiety of this
upcoming event. you keep thinking about the amount of people that will be staring at you, the amount
of pressure to get everything right, you’re getting paid and your client has high expectations on your
knowledge as well as your performance.

There are many ways you can handle this state of mind, you can push through it, which will give you a new experience of fulfillment and you might stumble over some of the words or some information, or you can use a technique in NLP called anchoring. This technique uses memories and made up scenarios to elicit an emotion. For example, whenever you want to feel confident you would think about a time where you were at your most optimal state, perhaps a time where you won a trophy or a time when you gave a presentation without any flaws and you felt completely in control. What you have to do is re-live this moment in your head, feeling what you felt in that moment, seeing what you saw, hearing what you heard, in some cases people go to the extent of smelling or even thinking about what they tasted in the moment, and while you are doing this, immersing completely into this memory you chose an anchor, a physical connection toward this memory, such as grabbing your wrist a certain way or snapping your fingers a couple of times, eliciting this memory every time you touch or perform the anchor.

By using anchors we can start controlling our emotional states, therefore winning half the battle from the get go. In fitness we could learn to use this to highlight the successes that will keep us motivated throughout our workouts as well as keeping on track with our diets. We can highlight how well you feel every time you reach a new level of fitness before being tempted by a piece of chocolate, or a hamburger.

When eliciting the anchoring system you could prepare your mind to order your body to perform at its best, visioning success will help keep the mindset more focused than simply wishing to be more fit, it will demand greatness not just hope for it.

COACH UP!Creating RAPPORT using NLP!

One of the most powerful techniques that NLP offers is mirroring and matching. This technique analyses an individual’s Primary Representational Systems (PRS) {There are five sensory channels we use to represent our experience – visual, auditory (hearing), kinesthetic (emotions, touch and
bodily sensations), taste and smell. In NLP books you will sometimes see the acronym VAKOG used to signify these) to communicate in a more personal manner, subtle enough that is hard to recognize that the verbal communication is being imitated in order to gain trust.

Mirroring and matching can also be done in a physical matter, emulating subtle moves from the way people cross their legs to the breathing pattern which can be mimicked to seem more familiar.

All of these abilities can be useful to deal with a client to generate a better relationship.

Controlling your inner game

Our performance will always reflect our mindset. Having a strong mental game will mostly shape a strong quality of performance in whatever we are doing. The “outer game” has to do with physical
skills. In fitness training, for example, this would your workouts and your diet. The “inner game,” has to do with your mental approach to what you are doing. This includes your attitude, confidence in
yourself, your ability to concentrate effectively, deal with setbacks, and so on. But how do we train our mental game? How could we train it to increase our success in the environment that we are in?

There are different aspects that will allow a better resilience towards a better inner game such as:
• Setting clear and achievable goals
• Developing the motivation and self-discipline to follow through on those goals
• Having tools with which to break old habits and set new healthy ones
• Updating your self-image and mental maps of yourself
• Appreciating and acknowledging your progress and building self-esteem

NLP provides various techniques that allow a better introspection to get to know the most important person in the world, you. When you see who you are and who you want to be, then you can ask more from you, and you will not only desire it, you will demand it.